Doc stared into the little man’s eyes, and Albert had to have seen something there that warned him. The dwarf closed his eyes. Doc drew the sword back. “I have killed many a man in my day, Albert, but I have always known the why of it. I shall know the why of it before I take your life, as well.” He turned back to Cobb. “You, sir, shall not afford the same liberties.”
“Damn you, Albert, for bringing this man here.” Cobb wiped his bloody hands across his shirtfront. “I’ll be a triple-fucked monkey if I don’t chill you myself.” He took a step forward.
Doc swung the sword stick to intercept the man. “I shall trouble to ask you not to do that.”
Cobb pulled up short. He snorted in anger, blowing great gouts of blood from his nostrils. His lips were coated with crimson stains.
The other men in the room trained their weapons on Doc.
The old man showed them a wolfs grin. “I don’t believe you gentlemen are any too willing to fire your weapons in the confines of this ville. Otherwise I would have never made it across the threshold. And that—I believe, gentlemen—is a double ace on the line.”
The tension remained in the room for a handful of seconds. Doc was conscious of every tick of it. He was still confused about who was who and what was what, but that was generally the case any time he was away from the companions.
“Leave him alone,” Cobb stated. He snorted again and cleared out his nostrils. He glared at Albert. “And what are you going to do if he’s just somebody Kirkland sent to trip us up?”
Albert shook his head. “Kirkland figures he’s got nothing to fear from us. Liberty knew I spent my free time here. And what Liberty knew about the inside of this ville was exactly what Kirkland knew. They ignored you even before I came along. You’re no threat to Kirkland by yourself, but mebbe with the help of Doc and his friends…” He let the thought hang.
Doc could tell from the grimace on Cobb’s face that the big man didn’t like hearing that. He slid the sword blade back into its housing, snapped it closed with a click.
“Kirkland’s got the plague working for him,” Albert said, “and he knows that. Anybody who doesn’t like what he’s doing in Hazard, well, they get a berth on the last train West.”
“If you do not mind my asking,” Doc interrupted, “but what exactly is this plague you persist in mentioning?”
“Nobody knows,” Albert replied. “All anybody knows is that any man, woman or child who wanders out of Hazard for more than two days’ travel, dies from the plague.”
“How long does it take inside the ville?” Doc asked. Images filled his head of bloated bodies he’d seen in his travels over the past three centuries. Being trawled through time had the distinct disadvantage of leaving a man’s thoughts addled. Some of the images in his head he knew he’d seen himself: an Indian village wiped out by smallpox, and a persecuted religious order all dead from syphilis. Others he wasn’t sure of, but he thought they were from old vid, or maybe it had been new vid at the time. Names cropped up in his mind: Legionnaires’ disease, ebola and AIDS, but he could put no real depth to them.
“Nobody dies inside the ville,” one of the other men said.
“If it is a plague,” Doc said, “then there should be an attrition within the ville, as well.”
“There isn’t,” Cobb said. “Kirkland sees to that.”
“How?” Doc’s mind seized on the implications of the problem.
“Man gives out inoc—inoc—” one of the men tried to say. Then he shrugged it off. “Man gives out shots. You know, needles in the arm. That kind of shit.”
“A cure?” Doc asked. “Well, if he’s giving out cures, any of you could get up and leave at any time you wanted to.”
“That’s not the way it works, Doc,” Albert said. “Kirkland’s inoculations buy you only a little more time. They don’t cure you.”
“But that makes precious little sense,” Doc said. “It would be much more difficult for a medical person to design a partial cure than one that would totally counteract the affliction.”